The Eyeborg

When he was nine years old, Toronto film-maker Rob Spence received a severe injury to his right eye in a shotgun accident. After a period of hiding the aftermath under an eyepatch, six years ago he had the eye replaced with a prosthesis. Being a visual artist, however, he had an idea – instead of just an unseeing artificial eye, he wanted one that could capture images of what he was looking at, and wirelessly transmit them to an external recording device. He himself wouldn’t be able to see through the eye, but the footage obtained from it could take film-making to new levels. It’s been a few years since Spence began his Eyeborg Project, but he has just announced that the eye is now functioning.